Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Website URL: https://www.ualberta.ca/arts/about/people-collection/felice-lifshitz

Keywords: Histories of: Europe, Christianity, Women, Gender. Politics/controversies around: History/"the Past" (representations/uses of) and/or Religions (not confined to Europe or Christianity). Historical Films/History on Film Feminisms/Womanism and Religions The Middle Ages/Medievalism Saints, Relics, Miracles, Shrines, Pilgrimage (primarily but not solely Christian)

About Me: I am trained as a medieval historian and have published many manuscript-based studies of medieval European religious and intellectual culture, often with a particular emphasis on women and gender. However, my larger abiding interest is the ever-changing ways that the unstable “past” has been constructed and represented in response to, and in order to influence, ever-changing present circumstances. While my greatest level of expertise involves constructions and representations of the European Middle Ages (that is, “medievalism”) I am comfortable discussing the general dynamics of historiography (professional academic history in words), historiophoty (cinematic history in images), and popular historical imaginaries.

Recent Publications: Gender and Historical Film and Television co-edited with Shiobhan Craig and Carol Donelan (Special Issue of Gender and History 30.3 (2018))

Salt, Sword and Crozier: Books and Coins from the Prince-Bishopric of Salzburg (c. 1500 – c.1800) co-authored (and exhibition co-curated) with Joseph F. Patrouch (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2017)

Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). 2015 Short-listed for the Wallace K. Ferguson Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association.

Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice co-edited with Celia Chazelle, Simon Doubleday, and Amy Remensyder (Routledge, 2011; Japanese translation, 現代を読み解くための西洋中世史差別・排除・不平等への取り組み, 2014)

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives co-edited with Lisa Bitel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; paperback edition, 2010)

Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies co-edited with Celia Chazelle (New York: Palgrave, 2007)

The Name of the Saint: The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to theSacred in Francia (627 – 827) (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005)

The Norman Conquest of Pious Neustria: Historiographic Discourse and Saintly Relics (684 –1090) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press, 1995)